the Last Run (1987) (50 page)

Tears streamed down the lieutenant's face as he rocked back and forth, trying to keep his eyes on the trail. His jaw ached so badly that he felt as if it might explode. He dug his hands into the plastic stock of his CAR-15 and stifled a scream inside himself.

Wade pulled out a smoke grenade and called the forward air controller's call sign that Foley had given him. The Air Force FAC responded immediately. "This is Pretty Bird, Five-zero. Go."

"Pretty Bird, am popping smoke, now. From smoke make drop three hundred meters due south on top of ridge. Over."

Wade tossed the smoke canister as the pilot answered, "Roger."

Colonel Sy and a corporal carrying a radio stepped over the wounded as they approached the general, who sat propped up against the outcrop wall.

Sy knelt down and patted the old man's hand. "We will carry you out soon."

The general's eyes were sunken, and his face drawn. He looked as if he'd aged twenty years in the past twenty minutes. His wounds had been tended, but he needed serious medical attention-medical attention he knew he would never receive in time. His eyes told Sy this as he whispered, "What is the situation?"

Sy lowered his head. "The Thirty-ninth and Forty-second are finished. There are some survivors, but the numbers won't reach a hundred. The Thirty-third has sent two companies to help the wounded. Here, at the Headquarters, we have twelve dead and sixteen wounded."

Sy looked up at the general. "A platoon from the Thirty-third engaged a small American force by the stream and killed them all. Another platoon has joined them, and they are now beginning to search the mountain behind us for others."

General Due took Sy's hand, whispering in a rasp. "Leave now. Take the wounded and fight another day."

The radioman raised the handset to his ear, hearing a call, and grabbed the colonel's shoulder. "The Third Platoon reports seeing a colored cloud on the trail behind us!"

Sy sprang up to leave but felt a tug on his trouser leg. The general was holding him and whispering again. Sy bent over to hear his words. "Let them go. The men are more important. . . you must leave now."

Sy gently pulled the old man's hand away from his leg and called for die able-bodied to pick up their weapons. The radio operator looked into the colonel's determined face with a questioning stare. "What did the general say?"

Sy glanced at his general, then at the slope behind him. "He said, 'Destroy them.' "

Senior Sergeant Chuong crawled behind the base of a huge mahogany and peered around. A yellow smoke cloud a hundred meters down the trail was billowing up toward the canopy. Chuong slid back. The American position would be located in the rocks just off the trail. He motioned his first squad leader closer and whispered, "You and the men from the Second Platoon stay here and pin the Yankees down with your gunfire. Colonel Sy has called on the radio. His men will attack up the slope in a few minutes. It will be a good diversion for us. I and the rest of the platoon will crawl along the slope and get closer. After the colonel's assault, we will follow with our own. Begin shooting when you hear the colonel's attack commence."

The squad leader nodded and crawled back toward his men. Chuong smiled to himself as he motioned the other squads to follow him. Second Platoon leader Quy had chastised him for being too slow in binding the sergeant's leg wound at the stream, but now, he, the cautious one, was leading half of the Second Platoon. Yes, he was cautious and maybe even slow, but he was not the one lying wounded back at the stream.

The first Phantom-4 jet streaked in and released one of its 250-pounders. The bomb overshot the ridge by two hundred meters and exploded so far down into the river valley that Wade could barely hear it.

Woodpecker looked at Thumper and whispered, "Them boys need some practice, don't they?"

The Air Force spotter plane called the second inbound fighter. "First strike, two hundred long."

Preacher was watching down the slope to the west when he saw two light-green-uniformed men pop up and run in a crouch over to a tree. They were only forty yards away. He was about to warn the others when he saw two more do the same thing. "Here they come," he whispered loudly.

Every man looked down the slope, except Wade, who spoke angrily. "Watch your own area, damn it! Don't shoot till you've got a target. Preacher, get me some Guns in here. Thump, the dinks will lay a base of fire to pin us down . . . probably from down the trail. When they do, pump a couple of gas rounds into 'em. Remember, everybody, wait till you have a target, and make your shots count."

Lieutenant Gibson laid his grenades in front of him and straightened the pins as Preacher lowered the handset. "Matt, the Guns went back to refuel. L-tee Foley says another set will be here in ten minutes."

Wade slapped the stock of his weapon angrily. "Shit!"

The second jet pulled up after releasing its bomb and began banking. The projectile crashed through the forest canopy and hit the slope one hundred meters short of the ridge. The ground shook violently, rolling over the grenades the team had laid out. Then the shock wave struck like a sudden, blistering, sixty-knot windstorm, sucking up all the air. The earshattering barooom left the men deaf and cringing in their shallow holes.

Colonel Sy was about to begin his assault when the bomb hit. The quaking ground knocked him over onto his radio operator. Sy quickly got to his feet and yelled for his men to attack, but even he couldn't hear his words over the racket. He shouted again and began running up the slope, waving frantically for his men to follow him. One by one, the stunned soldiers rose and came up behind him, shooting toward the rocks.

"They're attacking," Preacher yelled and sighted down the barrel of his M-16. There were six easy targets struggling up the slope direcdy to his front only twenty meters away. He panicked, not knowing which to shoot first. Finally, he fired at die closest attacker, knocking him down. Preacher immediately fired at the next closest. That soldier, too, fell backward, holding his chest.

When Quy's first squad leader heard the colonel's men yelling, he gave the order to fire. A barrage of bullets slammed into the boulders from the north, sending up rock chips and dirt in a gritty cloud, but Rose and Preacher were oblivious to their shooting. Facing down the slope, they were well protected by the heavy rock, and had a perfect field of fire. The attacking NVA were running and shooting wildly. They made easy targets for Rose and Preacher, who fired in short bursts, systematically mowing them down.

Thumper fired his M-79 gas canister toward the shooters to the north. The round exploded in a choking white cloud close to the first squad leader. In seconds, the firing ceased as the men gagged and fought to breathe.

Colonel Sy fell behind a tree and stared at his pistol. He hadn't fired a single shot. He spun around for the radio handset but his radioman lay five meters behind, clutching his thigh. Deep red blood spurted up in a thick stream between his fingers like a ruptured hose. Five more soldiers lay sprawled further back. The rest of his men were running down the hill away from the batde. Suddenly a cry went up that froze his blood. To his left, only twenty paces away, a wave of men screamed and ran toward the boulders. The Third Platoon!

Wade, Thumper, and Woodpecker were positioned facing north, so they saw the screaming men jump up only twenty meters away to their left front. Woodpecker immediately began raking them with M-60 fire as Wade opened up with his submachine gun. Thumper had just fired another gas run down the trail and quickly inserted a buckshot round.

Rose smiled as he picked up the Claymore detonator. He'd placed the mines in the perfect position. He even chuckled as he pushed down the electrical firing device.

The lead attackers were ripped and thrown backward by a black-brown cloud of lethal ball bearings. For an instant, there was complete silence. Then, suddenly, four men came charging through the smoke and over the mutilated dead and wounded.

Wade raised up firing. The first soldier lifted off the ground with the top of his head partially blown off. Thumper fired the buckshot round as Woodpecker stitched the others. All went down jerking and twisting in a strange death dance, but one managed to toss a grenade.

Gibson was in the middle of the ring of boulders, changing magazines, when the bamboo-handled grenade fell beside him. He grabbed for it frantically and tossed it toward the slope, but it exploded one foot from his hand. The air burst sent the hot deadly fragments downward and tore into the exposed team.

Colonel Sy peered around the tree toward the rocks. A thick vapor floated in suspension over the boulder, and the smell of gunsmoke and plastic filled his nostrils. Grotesquely crumpled bodies lay in front of the American position. The attack had failed. The Third Platoon soldiers ran down the slope. Only for fifty meters were they out of view of the Americans. A sergeant stood barking for them to regroup and for the leaders to report to him.

Sy holstered his pistol and began crawling toward the seigeant. The batde was far from over.

Sergeant Quy stood shaking. He knew the attack was doomed as soon as the Yankee machine gun began firing. The first squad had failed to keep the Yankees pinned down behind the boulders. He grabbed the closest soldier and yanked him to his feet. "Go to the trail and have the first squad leader and his men report to me, nowl"

A horrible rumbling, followed suddenly by a high-pitched screeching sound, forced both men to fall to the ground. The Phantom-4 pilot was not going to miss again. He came in at five hundred feet and pulled the stick back to escape the blast of his own bomb. The top of the ridge exploded in a crunching blast.

' 'Bingo!9 9 yelled the FAC pilot into the helmet transmitter, then calmed himself and spoke to the second jet as it began its attack. "Okay, Cisco Two, your buddy got a direct. Let's see you do same. Over."

The Phantom pilot snickered a "No sweat" and aligned his target.

Quy poked the shaking private lying beside him. "Go now! Get the first squad!"

Wade turned over in pain and tried to sit up. The backs of his legs, back, and buttocks were peppered in fragments. Woodpecker lay over his M-60, stunned and unable to move as Thumper rolled him over to see if he was alive. The back of the redhead's shirt and trousers were soaked with expanding spots of red.

Preacher wasn't hit, and Rose only had a few fragments in the back of his right leg. They both crawled to the open area between the boulders to help the rest of the men. Gibson lay unconscious over Toan. The lieutenant's hand was partially amputated from the index finger to down past his litde finger, and his arm was ripped open and spurting blood. Russian was on his hands and knees, patting the ground, as if searching for something.

Rose grabbed Gibson's arm and began tying a tourniquet with his parachute scarf as Preacher lifted Russian's head. The Czech had looked up just as the grenade exploded. The fragments had hit his face and chest. He was blinded by blood oozing from deep gashes in his forehead and scalp. Preacher wiped the blood away with his hand to see the damage and gagged. Russian's right eyelid was laid back, exposing a jagged fragment embedded in the eyeball. Blood and a clear jellolike substance oozed and bubbled around the fragment.

Thumper had felt no pain until he tried to change positions to help Woodpecker. Suddenly his back and legs felt as if there were burning hot marbles lodged inside the muscle. It wasn't marbles, but searing metal fragments that had ripped into him. He bent over, vomiting.

The jet's 250-pound Mark-82 hit twenty meters to the right of the other smoking crater on the ridge and exploded, shattering the silence.

Wade gritted his teeth and rolled to his side, lifting himself up after the ground quit shaking. Like Thumper, the initial shock had worn off and the gut-wrenching pain began to race through his body. He felt dizzy and nauseated, as if he had been stabbed by hot knives-all at the same time. He looked up at the others and forced himself to speak: "Report!"

The single command rang out crystal clear, like a slap. Each man fought to evaluate his wounds as if he was outside his own body. The pain, blood, smoke, and chaos were all set aside for another priority-responding to a command.

Preacher spoke first as he tore open a sterile bandage and placed it on Russian's eye. "Russian is hit in the face, blinded. I'm not hit."

Rose finished tying the tourniquet on Gibson's arm and glanced at the pool of blood under the old Montagnard's head. His neck was ripped open. "The L-tee is alive, but fucked up bad. The Yard bought it."

Thumper gritted his teeth in pain as he pulled up Woodpecker's shirt. The readhead was moaning and trying to get up. His back and legs were spotted with dark blue-purple spots where the shrapnel had embedded itself. "Me and Woody are hit in the back and legs, but. . ." He was going to say "okay," but he knew they weren't.

Wade shook his head violendy to clear his thoughts and tried testing his movements. The pain was horrible but bearable. He picked up his CAR-15 and depressed the magazine release. "Back to your positions. Rose, put out the rest of the Claymores and drag some bodies up for more protection. Preacher, get me the radio."

Preacher sat Russian back against a boulder and crawled for his radio. He could hear a voice over the handset.

"Three-one, Three-one, this is Three Alfa. Over."

Preacher put the handset to his mouth. "This is Three-one. Go."

"Three-one, the Slick is inbound for your extraction. Move to LZ, now/"